Thomas Merton: Religion, Relationships And Psychol

Thomas Merton, Religion, Relationships and Psychol

In my research, I have found how Thomas Merton has contributed in promoting a healthy spirituality and helped with giving a definition of what a healthy spirituality is and as well with promoting constructive community relationships in the subjects that he touched on when he was alive and how it still affects society’s issues today on both topics.

Thomas Merton has historically, socially and culturally impacted today’s society with his views on healthy spirituality, constructive community relationships and with many other issues on religion, relationships, and psychology that are still occurring in today’s world. Paul Pearson a directory and archivist at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine

“In the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” (Thomas Merton (1966) Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, New York, Doubleday, p 140.). Merton followed the commandments the one day in the shopping center and proved to himself how much a child of God not only he is, but everyone is. Many of Merton’s statements talk about not only do we have to self-love but to love everyone and out of that the community that surrounds us will begin to build constructive

He sought out to venture and learn more about God and more about spirituality which led him to become a Trappist monk for a period in his life. In many of his journals, he has talked about his experience as being a Catholic monk and his growth as a Christian from his experience. He then began to be more open about his own religion and about others as well. Once keeping an open mind Merton saw God in all things that he looked at in different religions and in everyday life, “Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God, is in all” –Thomas Merton (Thoughts in Solitude). In his journey, Merton turned all his thoughts into what one would define as a healthy spirituality.

Thomas Merton throughout his life demonstrated and influenced many people of all ages to turn to God and to seek a healthy spirituality. Both Constructive community relationships and Healthy spirituality walked hand in hand for Thomas Merton on his own spiritual journey as he always found a way for them to connect. “love is not just something that happens to you: it is a certain special way of being alive. Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life.” – Thomas